Chez Doval

Chez Doval is an otherwise perfectly good place to try Portuguese food in Montreal (and Jano's, aka the place you go to when the Schwartz lineup is too full, and your stomach, too empty, is not bad either). We went there for our office's Christmas dinner this year, where I got the grilled grouper. For some reason, grouper is not my fish of choice on the grill.

Went back tonight with S. You are first served a metal plate with one compartment with butter cups, and the other with a number of small black and green olives, and a basket filled with two gigantic Portuguese bread.

She had grilled squid as appetizer, which size could've well made it a main dish. The squid was served in slices, and had absorbed all of the grill's smoking taste that was expected. I had a chicken noodles soup, with the noodles being rice grain-sized stars, and the chicken, being what looked like real chicken stock (I won't bet my wallet on it, but the bits of chicken made it look like it didn't come from the can). I also had garlic shrimp, which was puny in size (six pieces), but was soaked in some interesting sauce that had tomatoes, and maybe some wine or porto (one review says it's butter).

For the main dish, S got a Portuguese-style steak, which was basically steak with a fried egg on top of it. XD It was a very good steak, she thought. I was intrigued by the "pork and clams" from the meat section. I was expecting to get something grilled, but I realize now that I had "scallops" in mind when thinking of "clams", the former being more easily grilled than the latter. It was reminiscent of the Chinese vinegared pork, or "khoh zhu yok", by the strength of its taste, and its appearance (dark undifferentiated pieces of meat and fried potato cubes in a thick sauce). The sauce, filling the bottom of a round dish containing the mound of pork/potatoes/four clams, was certainly wine-based, and too salty. I did not ask what this "pork and clams" was, so I only have myself to blame. The grilled chicken that the neighboring table had sure looked good after my third peck at the pork/potatoes.

For dessert, we were too full. However, they had at least natas, from what I can remember of last time. Got out of there for a little less than $30 a person. Just don't take the pork and clams. If you stay with the grilled meat and seafood, and are with a bunch of friends, it should be a food-sharing extravaganza.